WordPress Plugin: Increase Your Ranking With Alexa Redirect
July 25th, 2007
When it comes to making money online, one important factor to work on is your Alexa ranking. Most people choose the easiest route to do so, which requires the simple installation of the Alexa widget. The problem with this widget, like any widget, is the hit you’ll take on page load time.  For awhile yesterday, I noticed my complete page wouldn’t load due to this widget.Â
I did some digging around for an alternative and found the Alexa Redirect plugin. Simply just upload and activate it to complete installation.Â
What it does is add “http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?†in front of all of your internal links on your website (any links that use your domain name).  This will include your related posts, popular posts, comments, etc.  Readers will not notice any difference and Alexa will give you credit for the page view, bypassing the need for an annoying widget to be displayed on your site.Â
Now, I do not necessarily recommend this plugin for everyone.  If you get a lot of search engine traffic, these people will often view your page but won’t click on any internal links, which means you will not get credit for the page view from Alexa.  In this case, the widget is still a better way to improve your Alexa ranking.  This plugin would be for times when the widget is having problems or for people that choose not to display the widget their site at all.Â
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I’ve seen this but I don’t know how important the Alexa ranking really is. It doesn’t look like you’re using it are you?
I had read about this at connectedinternet a while a ago.. But But there many of people had raised a concern about it affecting the page rank.. Any idea about it?
Ryan – I am still using the Alexa widget (in the sidebar under the MyBlogLog widget). It has been hanging up some, so I’ve been trying to decide if I want to make the switch or not.
Smaller blogs that can’t get big sponsorships need a high Alexa ranking to sell text link ads and paid reviews. It is unfortunate, because Alexa’s system isn’t a true reflection of the blog’s ranking (because only those with the widget are truly getting their traffic measured).
dEEPAK – I hadn’t thought about how it would effect Google PageRank. Google has said they don’t like sponsored links, but I’m not sure if they would care about Alexa redirects.
I find the best thing is the search status firefox plugin. I dropped from 1,000,000 to 75,000 in about half a year without any sort of interfering with my blog.
One of my readers did a tutorial about this, and even by installing it on your own computer and nothing else it works.
Revisiting Alexa
I still prefer using the widget, as pointed out will it effect the PR of the pages?
Rhys – I fully support using the SearchStatus plugin (I use it also).
The problem is you’re only get one credit per IP address each day from people that have the Alexa toolbar (IE/FF) or the SearchStatus plugin (FF). Because very few people have any of them installed, you won’t earn credit.
The function of the widget or this plugin is so that everyone who visits your site (or clicks a redirect link in the case of the plugin) sends a ping to Alexa with their unique IP address, which earns you the Alexa credit for the page view. Alexa only records unique IP addresses every 24 hours, so you don’t get credit for multiple page views or multiple visits.
Does anyone know how this effects PageRank? I may have to read up on this over the weekend if noone knows.
I can only take a guess here , but if I am correct , it will not affect the Page Rank too much , because the Alexa redirect is similar to a 301 redirect if I’m not mistaking . ( in it’s essence , it’s a redirect like any other one , they just use it so they can record your IP and count a unique visit for that day ) Now , the problem that occurs is that incoming links will not pass all the juice , because , well that’s the problem with redirects and in time it can affect your PR .
I have written an article about Alexa a while ago , and I remember saying that gaming Alexa isn’t a good choice .
Why ?
1) Important websites that rely on Alexa ( for examle TLA ) will view / review your website at least once per month and will certainly notice that you’re using Alexa redirects on all of your links .
2) I am not sure of this either but , if I am correct , if this widget adds Alexa redirects in front of any of your links , putting some TLA links on your website , will also result in a use of the Alexa redirect , I wonder if tracking softwares do not detect these .. hmm .. tricky one huh ?
3) So many incoming Alexa redirects can’t be good right , someone could notice and who knows .. I haven’t read their TOS completely , but I’m sure this is something they don’t agree with .
P.S : The above paragraphs are only my thoughts and personal ideas .
Best Regards,
CristianR.
“Does anyone know how this effects PageRank?” — it doesn’t. Alexa ranking doesn’t have anything to do with PR.
Christian – Well said! As to your points about Alexa, I don’t think TLA would mind if you’re “gaming the system.” They are out to make money and find you advertisers. The flaw is truly with Alexa’s ranking system more than people trying to game it. It is kind of like Technorati weighing all inbound links, rather than being like major search engines and only weighing relevant inbound links that fit within your niche. As for #2, the plugin I wrote about and the widget are two different things. The widget is just a widget that displays in your sidebar, but when your page loads it has to “ping” Alexa. That is how it gets the unique IP. There are no actual redirects involved. The plugin above adds the redirects.
Jem – Alexa itself doesn’t have anything to do with PageRank, but that doesn’t mean Google doesn’t factor into their ranking things like redirects. They have admitted that they do penalize for sponsored links and such when they can confirm they are sponsored (hence the reason I have a “Featured Sites” section over a “Sponsors” section.) Now, I am not saying they do, only that they could.
Alexa ranking is not a good indication of traffic on the site. About a month ago, my site was around 130k ranking. Now its at 325k ranking. I am getting more traffic from searching engines now and also more returning visitors.
Hi,
Good article. But I prefer widget. In internet marketing, there are numerable tools to increase our site traffic and there by increasing our page rank.
I wouldn’t use the redirect simply because I find it a desperate and cheap sort of way to boost your rankings. This, along with viral links are at the bottom of my blog necessities table.
I prefer the Alexa Widget .
Thanks for linking!
I am concerned about, will it affect google rankings or AdSense if we use alexa redirect for the links in a website or blog?
regards
This plugin is no good, since it screws with your links, and in this way diminishing your Google ranking and search results. A better options is to make the Alexa redirecting JavaScript-powered: in this way the HTML will not be modified, and the redirects will still work. I’ve applied this technique to a new plugin called Better “Alexa Redirect” WordPress plugin. If you are interested about it, visit this URL to learn more about it:
http://kaloyan.info/blog/better-alexa-redirect-plugin/
or visit this page to download it:
http://wp-alexa-redirect.googlecode.com/
Does this plugin will affect anything?
Kaloyan – Thanks for posting a link to your Alexa Redirect plugin. I can see how utilizing Javascript would prove more useful.
Balinese – Can you be more specific? It certainly helps your Alexa ranking, but many argue it may effect your search engine rankings.
Kyle, what do you mean with ‘it may effect your search engine rankings’ ?
Does it have negative or positive meaning?
i’ve never really been concerned about alexa ranking… never thought it’s “important”… but i sometimes wonder why i get more traffic than my friend’s blog and yet her alexa rank is higher